As a newcomer to the fields of research data management and data curation, I attended my first LIBER workshop in Vienna. And I really enjoyed it! When I travelled back to my working place, which is the University Library of Freiburg in southern Germany, I had lots of impressions (both of the beautiful city and the workshop), useful information and nice contacts in my luggage.

First of all, a big thanks goes to the organisation team, who did a very good job. The location, ” a small ceremonial chamber”, in the main building of the University of Vienna was very impressing and also the food was nice, especially at the Conference Dinner at Stiegl Ambulanz. But now to the workshop itself:

The talks illuminated a bracing and broad range of different points of views from interesting speakers and gave a good overview of the current landscape of data curation in Europe. There were several representatives from memory institutions, technology related working groups, publishers, the economy and the European Commission, which was a good mixture. For me, especially the use cases, the projects and the RDM-tools presented were most interesting, as they show alternative pathways, give advice and examples for best practices. I am sure they will help in improving research data management and data curation at the different institutions in the different locations. Furthermore, the workshop showed that the trend is movingtowards to globalisation: repository networks and collaborations between memory institutions are built up, which is a good thing in order to provide permanent access to data worldwide.

Another thing that became apparent to me is that the people working in the fields of research data management and data curation are very nice. It was so easy to connect with the other attendees – at the beginning of the workshop I literally knew no one, but now I do. Altogether this encourages me to visit the 4th LIBER workshop in 2016 and I am looking forward to it.